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At Xavier, Nun Works Out Players’ Academic Side

By some measures, the success of the Xavier men’s basketball team rests not with a sharpshooting guard or a ball-hawking forward. Rather, it rests largely with a 5-foot-4, white-haired 77-year-old nun not afraid to rap on dormitory doors or to call players before dawn to ask about missed classes or late assignments.

Xavier, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati, is entering the N.C.A.A. tournament seeded sixth in the West Region with a 24-8 record. But Sister Rose Ann Fleming is a perfect 77-0. Since she became the academic adviser for Xavier athletics in 1985, every men’s basketball player who has played as a senior has left with a diploma.

“Sometimes, she’ll schedule an appointment or an academic meeting right in the middle of practice,” said Xavier Coach Chris Mack, whose team will play Minnesota in the first round on Friday. “I’ll say, ‘Sister, we have practice at 4.’ She’ll say, ‘No, this is important.’ ”

Apparently, such meticulous shepherding of college athletes toward college degrees does not occur throughout the 65-team field for the N.C.A.A. tournament, which begins Thursday and culminates in the Final Four three weekends from now.

This season, 19 percent of the tournament teams have graduation rates below 40 percent, according to a study released Monday by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. Across 36 sports monitored by the N.C.A.A., men’s basketball has the lowest graduation rates, with fewer than two-thirds of players earning degrees.

It is a seamy side to March Madness, a wildly popular carnival noted for feel-good underdog stories and buzzer-beating thrillers that ultimately produce a national champion.

But teams that underperform in the classroom are attracting increasing attention. The N.C.A.A. began tracking and publicizing the Academic Progress Rate (A.P.R.) for individual sports programs, by college, in 2004; those that fall below certain standards can be hit with penalties like losing scholarships. In January, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged the N.C.A.A. to redouble its efforts.

The N.C.A.A. notes that graduation rates for basketball players have slowly risen in recent years and are slightly higher than those for the general student population.

But universities like Xavier are leaning more heavily than ever on academic advisers. Xavier’s basketball team has the tournament’s 11th-highest A.P.R., which measures academic eligibility, retention and graduation rates. And people there know whom to thank.

“Our alumni over the years have told me that they’re so proud of the graduation rates,” Fleming said over a post-Mass coffee at Starbucks last week during the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament in Atlantic City. “They don’t want to hear about Xavier, or any university, using students athletically and then dumping them without a degree.”

She was dressed not in a habit, but in gray Nike sweats with Xavier’s Musketeer logo and white tennis shoes. Her hair, nearly all white, is cropped above the ears. She wears a heavy gold cross on a chain around her neck, representing her order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She cannot help smiling when she talks.

“She’s not that nun you had in first grade that hits you across the hand with the ruler,” said Mack, a first-year coach who has known Fleming since he was a player at Xavier in the early 1990s and through several years as an assistant there.

She has lived on campus since 1983, when she was teaching at Xavier, in a dorm that for a long time housed the men’s basketball team. (For a couple of years, she lived across the hall from David West, now an N.B.A. forward — and a Xavier graduate.)

Photo

Since she became Xavier’s academic adviser in 1985, Sister Rose Ann Fleming has helped graduate every men’s basketball player who has reached his final year of athletic eligibility.Credit
Barbara Johnson for The New York Times

She rises at 4 a.m. for an hour of prayer and meditation. Then she usually spends an hour or more at the computer, often researching law cases that she takes on for Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor. (A law degree is one of several she holds, including Master’s degrees in English, business administration and theology, and a doctorate in education administration.) She exercises on an elliptical trainer, lifts weights and swims. Daily Mass is at 8.

By 8:30, she is usually in her office, overseeing two other full-time advisers and two volunteers who help her track Xavier’s 271 athletes in 17 sports.

Fleming has the ear of faculty members and cellphone numbers for the athletes. On occasion, athletes will find her knocking on their doors or waiting outside for their return.

“She’ll wait in a blizzard if she has to,” said the sophomore guard Terrell Holloway, who received a visit from Fleming when he fell behind in reading during summer school. “Whenever she wants us, she knows where to find us.”

When potential athletes go to Xavier for recruiting visits, Fleming is one of the first people they meet. Xavier players said that they rarely met academic advisers when they visited other programs.

“Coaches call me and say, ‘Look, this person is really a good player,’ ” Fleming said. “ ‘But this person has not done well academically.’ And my first question is why.”

Her belief is that if students are focused enough to harness their talent into becoming Division I athletes, they certainly have the capacity to learn. But people learn differently.

“There are different channels to learning,” she said. “And I see my job as finding the best possible one.”

Xavier’s freshman athletes are required to attend 10 hours of supervised study hall each week, two hours per night. That continues unless grade point averages are above 3.0. Tutors are brought in for specialized help.

“There’s such a respect level because she’s been the academic adviser for Brian Grant and James Posey and David West,” said Mack, naming Xavier basketball players who completed degrees and went on to the N.B.A. “So when a freshman comes into our program, it’s not like we just hired her last week.”

Yet, most have never seen her shoot a basketball — which she did in high school in Cincinnati and college at Mount St. Joseph, when she was not playing on field hockey teams.

“If I wanted to shoot today, I’d have to spend a lot more time in the weight room strengthening my arms and chest,” Fleming said.

A few hours later, a photographer found a large ladder at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall to stand on to take a picture of Fleming and the men’s basketball team, but needed someone to haul it to the center of the court.

“Need some help with that?” Fleming asked.

A version of this article appears in print on March 16, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Xavier May Be N.C.A.A. Underdog, but Its Scholarly Nun Is 77-0. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe